


into open flame

by skeletalparade (boythighs)



Series: hearts on fire [1]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boythighs/pseuds/skeletalparade
Summary: “No.Iam bargaining, and you...youare playing with fire.” His hand gives a tug, sharp, sudden enough that Damen cannot resist its pull. He is jerked until their eyes are level, brown into endless, venomous blue. This close, Damen can see that his pupils are not quite right. Slit, like a cat’s, but filled with a more infinite amount of darkness. You could drown in eyes like those. Damen thinks he just might, if he isn’t careful, and no one has ever described Damianos Akielos as careful by any stretch of the meaning.





	into open flame

**Author's Note:**

> tis the season, everyone.

Pale pockets of moonlight slicing through tree leaves dance on the packed dirt, shifting sources of light as the wind shuffles on through the night. The spade tumbles from Damen’s hand as he finishes patting the earth back into place over the hole. When he is finished, he breathes softly into the dark, lingering on his haunches for but a moment before he rises again, gaze skittish as he peers around himself.

For a second, there are no discernible differences. A cry of birds overheard, subtle in the night, nothing between them and the sky as they take to it with fluttering feathers; crickets off in the field to his right, noisy and loud. If he focuses hard enough, he can hear a dog barking off in the distance.

When the change comes, it is like this: all the sounds of a normal night filtering off into nothingness, oblivion descending upon the crossroads in stifling silence.

He is a vision in the night when he finally appears. Damen is almost afraid that it has not worked, that the promise of a bargain is one he will not see fulfilled, disappointment swelling within him as it appears that all the research he has done has been for naught.

That is when he hears it, the crunch of gravel beneath heeled shoes.

Damen turns, and his throat locks up at the sight of him. The creature rolls bony shoulders back, twists his neck to crack it as if from disuse, a spilling fountain of buttery blonde hair cascading down around his face and dropping down his back. Pools of blue eyes flick open beneath the perfect arch of eyebrows, and all Damen can think is that he is _beautiful,_ that if the cost of his life comes at those hands, tucked into pockets of unnervingly black slacks, then it will be all too worth the price.

“Evening,” the thing says, voice lilted with accent. French, Damen thinks, and swallows down a bubble of nerves as pink lips stretch into a chilling smirk.

“Hello.” Damen is without faculty, no finesse, eyes wandering up, down the stroke of the body that takes just one step closer to him in the engulfing silence that has settled over the dirt roads. Dust kicks up and settles around the luster of his dress shoes, reflecting brilliant rays of moonlight but collecting none of the dirt that floats back down.

Nothing could have prepared Damen for _this._

“What brings you to the crossroads?” He takes another step as he speaks, and now he is forced to tilt his head back to meet the brown of Damen’s eyes. So small compared to Damen, but with no lack of intimidation – Damen can hardly look at him without tepid fear clawing its way up his throat, choking him. “Damianos Akielos.”

A thudding heartbeat. Damen furrows his brow. “How do you know my name?”

“I know what I need to know.” The creature responds coolly, tilting his head to the side, and Damen tracks the movement with a lasting glance as his hair shifts over the alabaster of his cheek. There is no color to him, no life. The shell of a being. “Why don’t you fill the blanks in for me.”

The intensity of his gaze has Damen feeling like a child caught up to no good, makes him feel small, and helpless. He straightens his back and forces himself to his full height to try and achieve some control over the situation that he alone has created. It does little to help.

“I want – I want my father’s company. He’s dying but I have an older brother, Kastor, whose desires aren’t…” Damen falters, wetting his lips as he thinks of how to properly word it. He has never been the best with words, but tonight they fail him even more than usual. “He’s not a good man, my brother, but my dad is blinded by his love for his oldest son and plans to leave the company to him. If Kastor takes over, then everything my dad has worked for for all his life will have been a waste, and I can’t let that happen.”

“How noble.” The creature hums, the humor in his voice undeniable, borderline sarcastic in the suggestion of it. Damen bristles in defense, but what good will it do to pick fights with something like the _monster_ standing before him? Beautiful though he is, the angelic curl of his lashes, the coy temptation of his voice, the reality remains that he is nothing short of horror, terror personified. There is barely restrained power that emanates from him, something that even Damen, who is just a human throwing himself into open flame, can sense.

He could, in all likelihood, reduce Damen to a puddle of his own blood with nothing more strenuous than the snapping of delicate fingers. Damen does not have any desire to find out, so he calms himself down with the breathing exercises he learned in the anger management classes he’d taken in high school. One deep breath in, one equally deep breath out.

“I can give you everything you want, and ten, long years to revel in it.” Comes the continuation, a purr pitched low. Unsettling eyes blink slowly at Demon, coil of clock-spring lashes, thick though fair. For some reason, Damen cannot look away from him, no matter how hard he does try to.

“Only ten years?” His voice is distant to his ears, far away. Barely a whisper. It will not be enough time. Only a delay to what will be inevitable without Damen at the helm of the ship. Kastor may be older, but he is still young, still healthy; he has a long life ahead of him, no amount of desperation can distract Damen from that.

The reaction to Damen’s question is the rise of an insipid brow, a movement so slight one might have missed it had they not been focusing. Damen is.

“Ten years seems plenty of time to me.”

The words lack real conviction. A test, maybe, pushing – what can he get out of Damen before Damen is unwilling to give any further? Damen is not quite sure what more he _can_ give, though, not more than what he knows the exchange to be. A soul for a life-changing favor, isn’t that how this goes?

“Twenty years. That would be enough to do what I must.”

Bells – that is how Damen might describe the clarity of the laughter that shocks the silence of the night, pierces through folds of dark and right through Damen’s own heart in turn. He can feel it echoing in the chamber of his chest, an orchestral affair. The sound is so unexpected, so unlike what Damen would imagine a beast from the depths of Hell being capable of producing. Beautiful. Even when the amusement on his face turns calculating, Damen can think of no other word to describe him.

The demon tilts his head upright again, regarding Damen with an unflinching gander.

“You call me here to cheat the universe, and then you bargain with me for more than I am willing to give you.” He snorts, reaches out to place a hand on Damen’s chest, right over where he is all aflutter with nerves that he cannot quell. “I suppose the true demons really _do_ live in the corporate world, don’t they?”

“We’re bargaining, aren’t we?” Damen asks before he can think not to, heeding the way the demon’s eyes narrow, the instinctive clench of his fingers in the fabric of Damen’s shirt. Beautiful, but dangerous. Deadly.

“No. _I_ am bargaining, and you... _you_ are playing with fire.” His hand gives a tug, sharp, sudden enough that Damen cannot resist its pull. He is jerked until their eyes are level, brown into endless, venomous blue. This close, Damen can see that his pupils are not quite right. Slit, like a cat’s, but filled with a more infinite amount of darkness. You could drown in eyes like those. Damen thinks he just might, if he isn’t careful, and no one has ever described Damianos Akielos as _careful_ by any stretch of the meaning.

“But I’ll admit, you’ve intrigued me. Normally someone in your position is scared shitless.” Damen doesn’t bother telling him that he is, that though Damen may be bigger, the demon, throughout this ordeal, has been the one in unerring control. “I’ll give you twenty years, Damianos Akielos, for the low, low, _low_ cost of your soul.”

The hand not holding Damen unyieldingly in place strokes the rough curve of Damen’s jaw, fingernails scratching along the stubble. He hadn’t shaved this morning. He’d been in a rush to get here, a day’s drive from home, the closest dirt crossroads he could find on Google maps. Now, he stares into the eyes of the damned, and his throat is clogged not with _fear_ – but with longing.

“Do we have a deal, then?”

Damen’s mouth will not work, so he nods instead.

Their lips meet at the demon’s urging, hand slipping to hook around the back of Damen’s neck to draw him all the way in. The hand holds him firmly in place; Damen could not move if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t, and that should terrify him, but it doesn’t, and there a great many things that are currently troubling to Damen that he ignores. All his worries are stowed away as he kisses back, pushing insistently against the mouth on his, drinking in the taste of darkness. Nothing but darkness.

There is nothing gentle about the kiss they share. It is like no kiss Damen has ever experienced, the filthy slide of the creature’s lips moving over his, forcefully parting Damen’s lips to lick hellfire into his mouth while the fingers at the nape of his neck curl into the hairs there, harsh. Damen moans into his mouth and lets the sound be swallowed up, unsure of what to do with his own hands; they hang hesitantly in the air between the sinful press of two bodies, tempted to touch, but frightened by the reception of such an action. He gets the feeling that if he touches without permission, he might not _have_ hands anymore.

When they break apart, Damen’s face is flushed, dark skin darkened still, and the demon looks – unphased. Amused, perhaps, by Damen’s vigor. He releases his hold on Damen and takes a step back, carefully righting the collar of his blood red dress shirt. It’s odd: he looks like someone who could work in the same offices as Damen has all his life, not a demon.

A demon who now owns Damen’s soul.

Nothing feels like it has changed, but the life in the night is slowly beginning to creep back into the space around them. The dog is barking again. Damen can feel the wind once more. The demon is pivoting on his heel, their deal done, business finished, but Damen cannot just let him go. He has something to ask him, a question that has begged to be voiced since he had first come to him.

“Wait.” He calls, giving the demon pause. He turns to peer at Damen from over the line of his shoulder, the faintest idea of an eyebrow quirked. The fact that he has stopped at all is enough to spur Damen on. “What’s your name? It’s only fair you tell me since you already know mine.”

In the dark, it is hard to tell what the demon’s face looks like now that he has moved away. The moon has vanished behind a shroud of clouds in the sky, pitch black cast down around them in blankets of night. An owl cries out. Damen thinks he might be smirking. Maybe he’s just imagining it.

Still, before he is gone, blinked from existence and back to the place where all evils and fools alike eventually go, he answers Damen’s question on a peak of wind, very nearly swallowed whole by the sound of a wild coyote, victorious in the catch of prey.

“You may call me Laurent.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you see any errors, i apologize for sucking LMAO. follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/occultened) for a (mostly) good time.


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